How to Survive Your Doctor's Care Get the Right Diagnosis, the Right Treatment, and the Right Experts for You by Pamela F. Gallin, MD, FACS Lifeline Press ; ISBN: 0895261200 Hardcover - 256 pages (September 2003) $19.95 Click here to return to main book detail page IT TAKES TWO Tips for Finding the Medical Institution and the Physicians That Are Right for You... 1. Read its report card. All hospitals are required to be licensed, and every licensed hospital receives regular accreditation from the Joint Commission of American Hospitals (JCAH). All reports are publicly available. You can call the hospital administrator’s office and ask what their JCAH rating is. 2. Ask what sub-specialists it has. The number of specialists at an institution suggests how often there’s a need for a specialist and therefore the hospital’s experience in a given area. If only two are named, then don’t go to that hospital. In addition, it’s imperative to check the certification and licensing of each sub-specialist. 3. Find out who staffs the emergency room. Don’t assume anything. Is the ER licensed as an emergency room? Emergency medicine is now a medical specialty; is there someone specialized in emergency medicine who staffs it, or do they use a rotating group of doctors from the staff? Avoid the latter, if you have a choice. 4. Ask if there is a pediatric emergency room. If there is, find out if it is staffed by a board-certified ER doctors who specializes in pediatrics. Not every emergency room has equipment sized for children, such as special tubes and surgical tools. 5. Ask if it is a designated trauma center. It suggests a higher degree of expertise because a trauma center is equipped to deal with everything. Increasingly, hospitals are beginning to collaborate by designating one hospital in an area so that, in a particular region, all the police or emergency workers will naturally go to the same place. Because resources have been pooled, patients get extremely fine care. The medical staff becomes quite expensive, and therefore they function at a higher level. 6. Familiarize yourself with its role in the vertical hierarchy. Small local hospital means basic care. Find out what hospital your small hospital feeds into should the need for more specialized care arise. 7. Find out if it is affiliated with a medical school. And which one. In general, the more complicated cases get fed to hospitals affiliated with medical schools. With a medical school affiliation, you get a very diverse staff – residents, fellows, the whole shebang. The institution has to be able to teach students everything they’re supposed to know. Therefore, physicians are interacting on a very high level of complexity and specialization. 8. Seek out the hospital with the expertise you need. If you’re looking for a specific area of expertise, find out who has it. That institution will have high-level, specialized staff over an institution that isn’t dedicated to that particular problem. In addition, call the American Board of the specialty you need to find doctors in your area (see p. 215). 9. Investigate its claims. If a hospital claims expertise, find out how deep it goes. In many geographical areas, hospitals have tried to buy segments of the medical market. For example, one local hospital may advertise the best cardiac center in the region. This may mean that they have hired one really fine specialist and given him or her funds to buy staff and equipment. The cardiac care may be good, but they may be lacking in other serious areas including anesthesia, pathology, radiology, ICU, and neurosurgery. 10. Ask around. Find out where your friends or family have gotten good care. If you have a choice of local hospitals, ask people which they like best. If you know a nurse or doctor that you can ask, you’ll get an even better answer. Click here to order from Amazon: